Painting socialists as villains, Trump refreshes a blueprint

If it does, it could provide Mr. Trump with a potentially effective weapon in confronting an increasingly aggressive and more liberal Democratic Party, defining it through attacks on Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who describe themselves as democratic socialists, and other members of the party pushing progressive policies like a 70 percent tax rate and “Medicare for all.”…

“You really have not had a self-consciously socialist movement of any size and influence since the 1930s,” said Michael Kazin, a professor of history at Georgetown University and the author of a history of the American left. “Clearly this is an attempt to portray Democrats as too radical for Americans and to connect them to Venezuela, which is of course a clever thing do since Venezuela is falling apart under an ostensibly socialist government.”

But the supposed threat of creeping socialism — and the dangers posed by someone like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez — have become favorite talking points for conservatives like the TV personality Sean Hannity of Fox News, who tells his viewers that far-left socialism had taken over the Democratic Party. Mr. Trump is now firmly aligned with that view.